Trusting, Forgetting, Falling
by Canterville
Summary: Balem can no longer recall what it is to long for comfort, and trust is a thing of the far-distant past. Character study.


"Don't be afraid, Balem. I'll catch you." The little boy is standing on a chair, slender arms outstretched, with his back to his waiting mother. He peeks over his shoulder, bright-eyed, and just shy of trusting.

"You promise?"

"I promise." Her smile is reassuring. "You trust me, don't you? That's the whole point."

"I trust you, mother." Balem takes a breath, then a fall, landing safely in her arms. Seraphi catches him up, holds him tightly, smelling of sun and lavender. Bright and warm and safe. When night falls, she sings to him. Before long, he learns the words, and they sing together. A thousand years, ten thousand years go by, and soon that memory is so dim, so far away that it may as well have been a figment of fancy. Twenty thousand years, nearly thirty thousand. Balem can no longer recall what it is to long for comfort, and trust is a thing of that far-distant past. New memories are sweeter. His mother crafts a second child, and he is no longer alone. Kalique is beautiful. She smiles easily, loves readily, and lives to play in the garden. Her small arms wrapped around his neck keep the memory of letting their mother catch him when he falls alive for just a little while longer. Still, Kalique grows up swiftly, bright as a star.

Balem begins to forget those sunlit afternoons, forget holding out his arms to fall into his mother's. He cannot remember being small. When Titus is born, from nothing, it seems, but the will of their mother, he remembers again, but knows Kalique is there with him. Balem watches his sister grow bitter in Titus' wake, bursting to know why she was not enough. She is neither of them, but cannot see the advantage in it. For a time, they thrive even so. Titus grows into a personable, savvy negotiator, but one who squanders their cut of the profits on pleasures that can only ever slip away.

Their mother grows distant, even as their empire flourishes. The first time she refuses the nectar, Balem laughs. The second time, he pleads. There is grey in her hair in a blink, and his pleas turn to desperation. His hands shake ever more, and he struggles to control the tremors. He never tells his siblings what passes between him and their mother. Kalique pretends that nothing is changing, while Titus accepts Seraphi's withering easily, and Balem hates him for it. He hates that he has had less time to see her as she was. He hates how little that seems to mean. 'Some lives will always matter more than others' becomes Balem's mantra, but it does not convince his mother into the regenerative embrace of the nectar. Desperation turns to rage, and then into murder. Balem convinces himself that this is the death she hoped for before the last of her struggling has ceased, before he can no longer feel her fluttering pulse. He keeps his secret well, and there are none who would dare accuse him. Why murder a woman who was allowing herself to die? He does not learn of Earth, a glittering sapphire, until after mother has gone from them.

His comeuppance comes nonetheless, and it is swift and unforeseen. The Splice's jaws are fastened around his throat before his mother's body can be committed to the Void. A loyal guard dog to the end. It seems right that the last song that leaves him is a dirge for her; he knows that if he lives, the damage done will kill what little music yet lives in him. Death rushes in as blood rushes out. He mouths a plea, over and over, and he wonders if the lycantent can hear it. '_Let me die_.' The world rushes in instead, forcing him to live, with a ruined voice to remind him of the terrible moment in which he felt what his mother felt before him. It's this he hopes to avenge upon the beast, but the damnable mongrel escapes with his life. Titus is smug, and Kalique is cautious, and both of their visits are unpleasant in their own, unique way. He wears high collars thereafter, to fend off idle touches and lingering stares. There is no music anymore.

With every Harvest after that day, Abrasax Industries stretches out further and further. It is his shadow, and he is walking into the sun. Each taste of success is less sweet than the last, but he no longer yearns for sweetness. Eternity hollows out, and he lets himself wither, awhile. Kalique seems to follow him, though they grow distant as they grow old. She visits him less, and sees Titus more, as if she's forgiven him for leaving her caught in the centre, neither new, nor the first. There is grey in Balem's temples when the lastborn brat dares to mention Earth. His only move is to whisper Kalique's name, and vanish. Her intervention will have use, where Titus' will cause inconvenience. His sister knows, if nothing else, to be afraid of what will happen should the Earth be wrested away from him. For now, he knows, she will withdraw to Cerise, and her gardens, where he cannot bear to disturb her. Old songs echo there, but he has forgotten the words.

It is their mother who contrives to rob him, and a Recurrence who becomes the instrument of that ancient design. Why, when she had crafted them, why, when she loved them, would she put this wedge between them? Why deny him what was promised? There is no more room for the appearance of age. Balem sinks into the nectar, and thinks of drowning. He needs all his strength to keep the Earth in his grasp. It slips, in spite of him, and slips quickly. The scent of lavender is a phantom, stalking the fringes of his memory, carried on snatches of songs from long ago. The first time he sees her, this Jupiter, it steals his breath and blunts his desire to see her dead.

It's only after many disappointments and the abduction of a family that the Recurrence is secured, and with her, the Earth. That beautiful, blue jewel. He imagines it nestled in his hand. His to crush against his palm. Balem sits motionless, looking out on the refinery, on the great storm that endeavours always to crush this, the fruit of thousands of years of effort. It rails, burning, and succeeds only in nourishing that which it strives to destroy. It won't be long before the Recurrence arrives. He keeps his back to the door. To keep his hands from trembling, he presses his fingers together. It has grown worse in these past millennia, enough that the others have begun to notice. Titus has a nose for weakness, but no strength to exploit it. He pays for it even now, while Kalique does nothing. The doors rumble open, then shut, but the sound does not stir Balem from his bench. Her footsteps drown the rasping of his breath. Jupiter.

Exhaustion radiates off her in waves; Titus has always known how to key mother up. Jupiter, it seems, is every bit as susceptible. And already, she begins to see the Harvests as unnatural murder. She cannot see the beauty in what they create, in the lives that Regenex nourishes. She does not understand, and she knows what he has done. The accusation, no, the truth, wakes something in him. It is sudden, white hot. Blinding. The storm breaks in, and he strikes her.

"_How dare you?_" Balem's fingers quiver, reverberating with the blow he struck, ghosting along her cheek, the familiar curve of her throat. His gaze lingers too long on her lips. He holds her eyes with his, scouring their familiar mismatched hues and seeing only shadows. He can feel her breath, the tension of her body. She is and is not Seraphi, closer to him than any other creature in the 'verse, and the farthest away. She barely moves, afraid, but searching. Her hands come up, delicate, soft things, and rest against his chest, pushing him back. It is peculiarly gentle, but steady. Balem is drawn to touch, as he has always been, even knowing as he does that she can never hope to understand him, or this universe. Not as Seraphi did. She is a hollow echo, a sham.

He steps back, eyes stinging. It takes all he has to ignore how just for a second, her hands hung in the air. For a moment his knees weaken, and he almost kneels before her. Submits. It is difficult to look at her without hoping they can go back to the life they had before, but time marches forward. He turns his back, again, blinking back tears. Earth. That is the true prize. Her abdication is needed, and she can return there, to vanish before the century is out, before the Harvest can begin. This weakness can be allowed to die before it winds its roots about his heart. Strive as he might, however, her resistance is familiar. No duress will wrest that from her which should have always been his. He wonders if his mother would have damned a planet for him, for Kalique, Titus. Or would she die with them, to save a planet that, given time, will only destroy itself?

The distant impact is percussive even at this distance, a puncture that becomes a rupture. His wondering is ended, and horror takes its place. In an instant, the crown jewel of his life's work is mortally wounded. He knows, already, that the planet will swallow the stockworks whole. All his last entreaties merit is the shattering of the unsealed sheaf, a last, tenuous hope, broken on the floor. He does not remember closing the distance between himself and Jupiter, only the sight of the hurricane gushing in. His touch is no longer hesitant, and no longer gentle. His hands are tight around her throat, anger deafening him to any attempts at reason. Jupiter has to knee Balem hard before anything more than an outraged snarl can leave him.

"Kill her!" His voice scrapes its way out, a painful scream that turns the room to chaos. The floor vanishes from under his feet, and the hard stone below catches him. In the confusion, he sees his mother's spectre, dragging her false family toward safety. He takes a blade in hand, and lunges without a thought. The swipe of the blade that is meant to kill, only grazes her, and the attempt on her life is cut short. She levels a gun at his chest. He is right in assuming she won't kill him, and wrong is assuming she won't shoot. Pain lances through his leg, and he crumples. The ground falls away again, but this time the gravity troughs sucks them in. He is screaming and spinning end over end, a helpless ragdoll clawing for a handhold wherever it can be found. He hardly notices that Jupiter was pulled along with him. His stomach writhes as he stares across the glittering blue current between them. She flees. Balem does not need to hurry in pursuit. He knows that he will find her.

Something suffocates within him as he stalks the dying stockworks, an iron bar in hand. There will be poetry in killing her with a part of what her interference has destroyed. She almost runs into his arms, and the fear in her eyes as she looks up at him takes him back; far beyond this place. She must remember how they fought before the end. It quickly ceases to matter. Mother always knew where he was weak. Her nimble fingers exploit the wound he had almost forgotten, and soon the iron rod is in her hands. Blows rain down upon him, until, perhaps, she tires. There is no poetry in being beaten with a splinter of the very thing he has poured his life into. Balem is on his knees before her, trembling and at her mercy. Hasn't he always been at her mercy? The refinery cannot survive, Earth is taken from him, and he is bleeding. It is over. Jupiter Jones is gone, only his mother stands before him, looking at him as she did so long ago. Ungrateful and alive.

"You said you hated your life." The words drag themselves out. All he can taste is blood. "And you begged me to do it," he gasps. "You begged me to do it!" Had he not spared her? Had he not damned himself to this unending hell to do it? Had he not shouldered the weight of the Abrasax legacy to let her out from under it? He hears the clatter of the iron bar more clearly than he does her answer.

"I am _not_ your damned mother." It seems impossible that the woman standing over him is not Seraphi. She stares into him, full of revulsion, uncomprehending. That sight alone is more painful than his bruised limbs, his ringing ears. He remains frozen, as if she might say anything, anything more, but there is no time for words, even had she any to spare. He will never know what she might have done. The platform gives a minute shudder and he knows his time is spent. Balem can do nothing but scrabble like a rat for purchase as the floor gives way beneath him. As he begins to fall, the scream that rips its way from between his teeth ravages his ruined throat. This is not the death he wanted. There is no release in this. The gaping maw of his sinking refinery opens up below, and in a few abysmal seconds it becomes too difficult to breathe. Jupiter comes crashing down around him, and rises up from below. The Recurrence is, herself, a tiny speck, but he sees her safe before the end. His cry of horror dies on his lips as the planet envelops him utterly. With his arms outstretched, he closes his eyes, and falls into his mother's arms.

"Don't be afraid, Balem. I'll catch you."

"You promise?"

"I promise."


End file.
